[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 17723-17729]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   CURRENT COUNTERPRODUCTIVE POLICIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Schauer). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Rohrabacher) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, as I stand here on the floor of the 
House tonight and after hearing this fine presentation and thinking 
about all the things that are going on in Washington right now, I am 
reminded of the television series ``The Twilight Zone''. These days, I 
half expect Rod Serling to appear from behind a curtain and

[[Page 17724]]

announce that ``This is the Twilight Zone.''
  Well, yes, there's almost a bizarre sense of unreality here in the 
Nation's Capitol--the transformation of private liability into public 
debt on a massive scale; the unprecedented level of deficit spending, 
debt piled upon debt; borrowing from China in order to give foreign aid 
to other countries; enacting Draconian restrictions and controls on a 
national economy and on the lives of our people in order to stop the 
planet from going through a climate cycle.
  What? The Earth has had so many climate cycles in the past, and now 
it's being used--the one we're in, which is very little different than 
any of the other cycles we have been in--it's being used to justify 
economy-killing and freedom-killing controls, taxes, and mandates, and 
putting power in the hands of international bodies that should be the 
power of the people of the United States to run their own life.
  Our Nation's borders leak like a spaghetti strainer. Millions of 
people illegally continuing to pour into our country to consume limited 
health care, education, and other social service dollars. And, yes, to 
take jobs away from our people and, in some cases, to commit crimes 
against our people. Our government just lets it happen. We can't even 
build a darn fence.
  And we have had a one-way free trade policy with China that has all 
but killed medium- and large-scale manufacturing in our country and 
which has relegated our own people to low-paying jobs and sent 
trillions of dollars to Communist China.
  No one has even suggested a change in that obviously rotten policy 
if, for nothing else, just to give our economy a little boost. Instead, 
we begged the gangster regime that runs China to loan us even more 
money--money that they accumulated because of a trade policy that has 
been monstrously counterproductive to the long-term interests of our 
own people--a one-way free trade policy.
  And that's not the only counterproductive policy which has brought 
our economy to its knees. Our people are suffering high energy prices 
needlessly. There are dollars being siphoned off from our pockets and 
deposited in the coffers overseas--the coffers of rich foreigners. Some 
of these rich foreigners who are now receiving all of these dollars 
which we have to spend to buy energy, some of these foreigners hate us.
  And while what little money we have goes to buying foreign oil, 
massive domestic deposits of oil and gas worth trillions of dollars are 
left untouched, untapped, and unused.
  Off the West Coast, huge caverns of valuable oil and gas are sitting 
there, unused, even as California sinks into an economic abyss and 
public services are cut back or canceled. Trillions of dollars sent 
overseas for energy, while at home no new oil refineries, no 
hydroelectric dams, no nuclear power plants.
  We are told of course, You have to rely on solar, only to find out 
that radical environmentalists in the name of protecting the habit of 
insects and lizards are blocking the building of solar plants in the 
desert. We can't even build an aqueduct in California because of a tiny 
fish--the delta smelt. So our people will suffer because of concern 
over a worthless little fish that's not even good enough to use as 
bait.
  People are beginning to suffer in the Central Valley for lack of 
water. There's no water for the crops. There's just about enough water 
for them. So they don't have a job and they can't pay for food. Water 
prices are going up for tens of millions of Californians in southern 
California, taking even more money out of our pockets, further 
undermining our people's ability to pay for their basic essentials.
  Yet, with all of this, just a few weeks ago Congress voted not to 
help our suffering people and move forward with water production, but 
to protect that damn little fish.

                              {time}  2115

  Well, then on top of it all, last year, in the name of preventing 
economic calamity, Congress was stampeded into giving away trillions of 
dollars. Much of it to--well, nobody knows really who did get all of 
that money. We have provided hundreds of billions to the financial 
industry, fat cats who have been giving themselves bonuses even as they 
drove their own companies into the ground. Well, I would rather spend 
the money on lizards than on that bunch. And here we are facing an 
economic crisis, and even after all of these mind-boggling giveaways, 
we still face the same economic crisis. And those mind-boggling 
giveaways of trillions of dollars, which we are now going to have to 
pay the interest on because it is now debt that is owed by the American 
people, this may well have made the situation worse and more damaging 
and elongated our economic hardship.
  As I say, it is all a bit bizarre. But if we are to pull our country 
out of this, we need to mobilize and activate our people. It is time 
not to give up, but to buck up and to stand up. With all that is facing 
us, let's not forget that Americans have an inherit resilience. We have 
met and overcome great challenges in our past. The fundamentals were, 
of course, in the right place in those days. Our people were strong and 
had a culture of self-reliance. Our leaders, I dare say, had more 
courage, common sense and even perhaps integrity than today's bunch. 
Our freedom was our greatest asset. It was intact, yet to be eroded by 
decades of Federal expansion of our government into areas that it was 
never meant to go.
  Our Constitution was once revered. That, more than anything else, 
kept America on the right track, our Constitution and the rights it 
incorporated. One of the constitutionally protected rights that is 
often overlooked was key to the success of our country, helping us 
overcome hard times and ensuring the well-being and safety of our 
people. Protecting this right is essential if we are to turn around the 
economic decline that we are now suffering.
  It is this right and the efforts being made in Congress to undermine 
it that is the subject of my speech tonight. That little recognized, 
but immensely important, fundamental right is the specific protection 
provided in our Constitution to America's innovators, creative citizens 
and free thinkers, and to every person with a new way of approaching a 
problem or getting the job done or making a system just a little bit 
more efficient.
  Article I, section 8 of that great document, the U.S. Constitution, 
states that ``Congress shall have the Power to promote the Progress of 
Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and 
Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and 
Discoveries.'' Significantly the word ``right'' only appears once in 
the body of the Constitution, and that is in article I, section 8, 
which I just read.
  That word ``right'' was in place even before the Bill of Rights was 
added to the Constitution, which suggests these economic rights were 
believed to be as vital to the future of our country as were the other 
rights that were protected: freedom of religion, the rights of speech 
and assembly.
  Our technological genius and the laws consistent with the intent of 
the Constitution which was protecting and promoting that genius, 
accomplished what they were intended to accomplish. It has been 
America's technological edge, flowing from that fundamental legal 
protection, that has permitted our people to enjoy the highest standard 
of living in the world and allowed our people a level of opportunity, 
which gave common people the chance to live decent lives and to control 
their own destiny.
  It has provided the technology needed to defeat tyranny and keep our 
people safe from foreign armies and terrorists. Technology and freedom 
go together; our Founding Fathers knew this. It is also true of 
technology and prosperity. It is not just hard work that built America. 
People around the world work hard, and so many of those people who work 
so hard live in abject poverty. But when coupled with technology, and, 
yes, freedom, that hard work produces vast amounts of wealth, even 
while easing the burden on the working people themselves.
  Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and others, 
all

[[Page 17725]]

of our Founding Fathers, were not only people who believed in freedom, 
but they were people who also believed in technology and the potential 
genius of the American people. By the way, Jefferson, the author of the 
Declaration of Independence, was also the first head of our country's 
patent office.
  As our Founding Fathers wanted, we have had the strongest protection 
of patent rights of any country in the world. That is why in the 
history of all humankind there has never been a more innovative or 
creative people. It didn't just happen. It happened because our 
Constitution and our Founding Fathers saw to it that our law protected 
the ownership of one's intellectual creations.
  Americans led the way in uplifting humankind's quality of life and 
giving average Americans the opportunity to prosper and enjoy life. Who 
created the American Dream? Our people who worked hard. But also our 
inventors who gave them the technology they needed to do their job 
better than ever before. That is how highly paid people were able to 
outcompete large numbers of lowly paid people. America's goal was to 
build a country where all of us, not just the elite, could have a 
wonderful life and could live in prosperity.
  Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. He also invented interchangeable 
parts for manufacturing. How did that change America? How did it change 
the world? Ordinary people had clothes and jobs thanks to Eli Whitney 
and the American Constitution that encouraged and protected his genius. 
Cyrus McCormick invented the reaper. Before that, farm workers had to 
carry heavy tools and work themselves half to death. The amount of 
harvest was limited, and it was all based on human strength and not the 
strength of the machine. With the invention of the reaper, ordinary 
people, farmers and laborers, had better lives and lived longer lives 
and stomachs that were filled with an abundance of food.
  Samuel Morse invented the telegraph, tested right here in this very 
building, the Congress of the United States. And from it came, of 
course, Alexander Graham Bell's telephone. And then there was Thomas 
Edison who invented the light bulb, and so many other inventions that 
uplifted the life of ordinary people.
  These were not just accidents. These creative people were able to 
flourish under a system of constitutional protections that were 
superior to any other such protections anywhere in the world.
  Perhaps the epitome of the little guys who, with freedom, 
accomplished greatness, were the two fellows who owned a bicycle shop 
in Ohio, the Wright brothers. These two very ordinary Americans ended 
up inventing something just a little more than 100 years ago that 
changed the world forever. They were told 110 years ago that what they 
sought to create was impossible. Yet with limited resources and 
protected by our robust patent system, they took humankind with its 
feet planted firmly on the ground and sent us soaring into the air and 
then into the heavens, just two ordinary Americans, the Wright 
brothers.
  One segment of our population, Black Americans, have been prolific 
inventors, men like Jan Matzeliger, a former slave who invented a 
machine used in shoe manufacturing. It was Matzeliger who, protected by 
a patent, brought down the cost of shoes for an entire population. 
Before this man made his invention and put it to work in the shoe 
industry, most Americans had one pair of shoes for their entire life.
  There is also George Washington Carver, a world-respected scientist 
and inventor, and so many more Black Americans. Why? Because in that 
era, when Blacks were discriminated against, we actually respected the 
rights of technology ownership of Black inventors. Thus they excelled 
when their rights were protected. And America and the world were better 
for it.
  Our technological superiority provided us with prosperity that has 
also kept us safe. We cannot match the tyrants and the gangsters man 
for man because they don't care if they lose their own people. We must 
beat down our competitors and our enemies with superior technology, or 
we will lose, and our people will suffer as a result.
  Bad policies put us in our current economic crisis. Tonight I warn of 
a huge policy shift that is making its way through this twisted 
legislative path into law. If the legislation I am warning about 
tonight passes in both Houses of Congress and is signed into law, the 
legal protections for our innovators and innovations that have made 
such a difference in America will be greatly diminished, if not 
destroyed. So take this as a fellow patriot sounding the alarm.
  Tonight I would like to speak about something that would be 
devastating, another awesome threat. Yet there is a blase attitude 
here, and one would think that this is just a minor, if not irrelevant, 
issue. The fundamental changes being proposed in our patent law will 
have a huge impact on our lives and will dramatically alter the lives 
of our children for the worst.
  Tonight I seek to alert my fellow Americans just how significant this 
issue is to their jobs, their prosperity and, yes, their safety. The 
so-called Patent Reform Act of 2009, H.R. 1260, is a bill that is not 
new to these Halls. It is nearly duplicative of legislation that has 
been introduced time and again. Each time a small group of patriots, 
and I'm proud to have been among them, has managed to defeat the 
multinational corporations who are behind this legislative lunacy. But 
they keep coming back. They have got deep pockets.
  So here we go again, to fight the same fight over nearly the same 
bill. But if we lose it just once, the fundamental protections of our 
technology rights will be lost forever. There is no going back if we 
lose because this is an attempt to tie us, we, the American people, to 
``international commitments'' rather than to constitutional 
protections.
  Stick with me on this.
  America's economic adversaries are engaged in a systematic attack on 
our well-being, and thus they have noticed one of the strongest and 
most important elements of our country's success has been the patent 
protection enjoyed by our people. That is what this so-called patent 
``reform'' is all about. It is not reform, but it is about the 
destruction of our basic system which has served us so well.
  This crime in progress is being pushed by huge multinational 
corporations with little or no loyalties to our country or our people. 
The justification for this attack on our patent system, as I say, a 
patent system that has served us so well, the justification, the 
proponents claim, our patent system is so different that it must be 
harmonized with the rest of the world. Get this: we have to weaken the 
protection of our technology ownership rights to harmonize our laws 
with the rest of the world. Our laws are, in fact, substantially 
different. So harmonization means dramatic changes in our system. In 
the end, that will change the lives of our people. And the change will 
be for the worst.
  The corporate elitists who are pushing this consider themselves 
globalists. They are not watching out for us. In this battle over so-
called patent ``reform,'' their goal is not reforming, but diminishing 
the legal protections for Americans, for American inventors. This in 
the name of harmonizing with the rest of the world our inventors will 
be made vulnerable to those who would rob them and thus rob America of 
the advantage that we have been given due to this strong patent 
protection.
  This is what gives us the advantage, our technological advantage, 
against overseas competition. That will be taken from us. If America is 
to be prosperous, if we are to be secure in the future, we must take on 
our own corporate elites who would change the rules to our detriment 
but perhaps to their short-term gain.
  Those playing the sinister game are, of course, not saying that they 
are out to destroy the patent system. Well, they act aghast when 
confronted with this suggestion. But from a distance, it is clear. Here 
is an article in the China Intellectual Property News about last year's 
legislation that, as I say, is a bill that almost totally mirrored the

[[Page 17726]]

current bill that is going through Congress. They are almost the same 
bill.
  This analysis was written by a former senior judge and deputy 
presiding judge, two of them, of the intellectual property division of 
Beijing's High People's Court, whom I now quote: ``The bill is 
friendlier to the infringers than to the patentees in general as it 
will make the patent less reliable, easier to be challenged, and 
cheaper to be infringed. It is not bad news for developing countries 
which have fewer patents.''
  Then the authors who are writing this article asked, Why is it that 
the United States is making it easier to violate the intellectual 
property rights of our people while at the same time trying to convince 
China and others to respect the intellectual property rights of 
Americans? He asked that question in this article. Now, that is from a 
senior Chinese scholar about the legislation that we stopped last year, 
and that legislation was almost the same as what we are facing this 
year.

                              {time}  2130

  Certainly none of his criticisms are different for this year's bill 
than what they were for last year's bill.
  Mr. Speaker, it's estimated that the U.S. economy loses $250 billion 
a year from global intellectual property theft, and that does not take 
into account the jobs that are lost here when China and other countries 
steal and use our technology to compete with our own companies and put 
our own people out of work. That loss is billions and billions more.
  Now, that's under current law they're able to steal that and use our 
technology against us. That's not under the watered-down system which 
will result from the so-called reform bill which is now being 
considered here on Capitol Hill. This at a time when our country can 
ill afford such a drain. We are trying to change our laws so that it 
will make it easier for foreigners to steal our technology and use it 
against us.
  Yet, those pushing the so-called patent reform legislation are making 
our innovators and research industries even more vulnerable to such 
blatant theft, even though we are now in a time of economic hardship. 
Foreign firms in India and China and elsewhere are getting ready to 
pounce.
  When looking at the general state of America's patent system, and 
that's what we're doing tonight, we need to admit, and I will fully 
admit, there are lots of flaws in our patent system and, yes, there are 
problems in our patent system that need to be addressed.
  We hear of horror stories concerning companies that are tied up for 
years in court. We hear about examiners who are undertrained and 
overworked, and that's absolutely true. They aren't getting the 
training they need and they are not getting the pay they deserve.
  There are delays and our innovators could use some help in protecting 
themselves from foreign thieves and infringers. So we have got some 
problems with our patent system that need to be addressed.
  But that has nothing to do with H.R. 1260, the bill now making its 
way through Congress. Everyone assumes that a bill entitled Patent 
Reform would be doing that, would be correcting the problems of the 
patent system. The title of this bill is so fraudulent that if it were 
a product, it would be banned from the market for making false claims.
  This bogus reform bill has visited us before. As I say, it's come 
before. We've had these same multinational megacorporations trying to 
undermine the patent system. We've seen it time and again. But if it 
ever passes once, we're never going to be able to get these rights 
back.
  A similar one was beaten back a dozen years ago, as well as another 
just a year ago. The same crowd that was behind those inventors' 
nightmares is behind this year's anti-inventor foray. Let's put it this 
way: They are powerful, multinational electronics companies with no 
allegiance to Americans or America. Let me just note that some of these 
companies, for example, have had situations in China where they ended 
up working with the Chinese dictatorship utilizing their computer 
systems to track down dissidents and to stamp out people who are 
struggling for freedom in that country. On our side--so that's the 
people who are trying to reform America's patent system.
  On our side, well, we're just a ragtag group of legislative 
insurgents trying to stop this incredible change to the fundamental 
rights of our people. Marcy Kaptur, a Congresswoman on the other side 
of the aisle and a fine friend and a wonderful Member of Congress, with 
little help from Steny Hoyer, again, now a leader on that other side of 
the aisle, along with Don Manzullo and John Campbell of California and 
myself and just a few others, we were able to fight that good fight 
over the years.
  But no one thought we had a chance because we didn't have any of the 
big money behind us. We didn't have these multinational corporations. 
We didn't have the high-priced lobbyists who go to the Judiciary 
Committee year after year giving donations to the members of the 
Judiciary Committee in order to get this bill out in the form they 
want. No one thought that we had a chance because they already laid the 
foundation with all of their campaign donations and all of their 
influence in Washington. Well, so we were told even before it was 
brought up, you don't have a chance. Forget it.
  We labeled their Trojan horse legislation, this antipatent 
legislation, we labeled it the Steal American Technologies Act. Again, 
it wasn't--these bills that we have defeated in the past are not that 
much different than what we have before us today. Well, that Steal 
American Technologies Act, that label stuck, and it worked, with a 
little help from talk radio.
  And then, also confirming that democracy really works, David beat 
Goliath. Yes, we, the small group of independent Members of the House, 
working together on both sides of the aisle, we won. And that means the 
American people won. Clearly, by the outcome, this wasn't a Democrat or 
a Republican issue. It was an American issue. The patriots beat the 
globalists.
  Now, we have another attempt, very similar to the ones that we have 
beat in the past is being made now. It's working its way through the 
system in the name of harmonizing American patent law with the rest of 
the world. It's still here. We defeated it in the years past. If we 
don't win this time, all of these patent rights we've enjoyed will be 
lost forever because they're trying to tie this in to international 
agreements rather than the U.S. Constitution.
  But, as I said, when they come back, the big companies that were 
pushing this have deep pockets and they're able to come back, but we 
who opposed it need the support of the American people if we are to win 
this battle with Goliath this year.
  So here we go again. It's H.R. 1260. People should remember that 
number. It is the son of the Steal American Technologies Act. It 
contains all of those provisions that we hated so much. That bill has 
already passed through the United States Senate. It should be 
considered a primary threat to our freedom at this moment. The 
globalists, the corporate thieves and the looters behind this bill are 
intent to get it through and they will not give up. They must be 
defeated instead, and that won't happen on its own.
  Those of us who are fighting the battle here in the House and in the 
Senate, we must act in coordination with the American people. The 
American people need to get involved or we lose.
  What are some of the specifics that back up my charge that this bill 
undermines patent protection rather than reforms the system, as we are 
told?
  Well, this first glaring issue is that the bill changes a fundamental 
concept that has always been part of American patent law which is 
differentiated from the other patent laws around the world. And that 
one element, the most important concept, is that it is the person who 
actually invents something who is the one who will get the patent and 
have the rights of ownership of that technology. The one who actually 
invents something.
  Other countries have patents that are based on who managed to file 
for a

[[Page 17727]]

patent first; in other words, who got to the paperwork, who could hire 
the lawyer, who managed to bribe the official or managed to understand 
the deadlines better, not who invented the technology, who filed the 
paperwork first. And this is as compared to our system where people who 
actually invent new technology have the right to own it.
  The legislation now making its way through Congress changes our 
current system from first to invent, which is what it's been all these 
years from our country's founding, to what is called first to file. If 
put into law, any new application or action will be needed every time 
there's a little step forward in research. Any time one is going 
towards an eventual goal, even one step, there's going to be new 
paperwork demanded, new action, new applications to be filled out, 
rather than waiting for the goal to be achieved, waiting for the entire 
invention to actually be complete, so that it can be incorporated into 
a patent.
  Well, because so many more patent applications are required now, if 
we make this change, to provide exactly the same protection, there will 
be a major new cost of getting a patent. Well, the little guys aren't 
going to be able to afford that cost. Well, the big guys can afford it. 
The major companies who have lots of lawyers working for them, they'll 
be able to afford that. The little guy will be frozen out. That's the 
intent of the legislation. That's what they want to do.
  The massive new flood of paperwork into the Patent Office is also a 
doomsday scenario that is bound to make the Patent Office less 
effective in doing its basic job, which is protecting the patent rights 
of our people. That is the intent of the legislation, to basically make 
the Patent Office less effective, not more effective. So the little guy 
will get frozen out and the system becomes less manageable because you 
have all kinds of new paper to be dealing with.
  Those powerful interests pushing this so-called harmonization know 
very well what the results will be. This isn't a mistake in 
communication. They know what they're doing. They already steal what 
they can from the little guys, and this will make it easier for them to 
steal from the little guys. It looks benevolent. It sounds benevolent, 
patent reform, but this is a sinister, sinister bill. It will destroy 
rights that the American people have had since the founding of our 
country and have had so much to do with our prosperity and our 
security.
  Well, then, in this legislation, there is a pre-grant and post-grant 
review section. The bill opens up new avenues of attack before and 
after a patent application has been acted upon. For example, a patent 
applicant has applied for an overseas patent, and if he does, it opens 
him up to attack even before his patent is issued here in the United 
States.
  This pre-grant opposition helps only the big guys, only the 
infringers and the looters. It hurts the little guys. And that's the 
intent of the law. That's why the change is being proposed. That's why 
they're pushing this law, because it hurts the little guys, and the big 
guys are pushing the bill.
  Then the bill also contains a newly invigorated post-grant review, 
which means yet another avenue to challenge patents after they've 
actually been granted, bogging down the system, increasing inventor 
costs, undermining legitimate inventors, and opening the door to 
foreign and multinational corporations who are all ready, they're ready 
to pounce to take advantage of yet another post-grant review of the 
patent.
  For those of you in the know, the post-grant review is a totally 
unnecessary change, a nonlegislative reform in the interparties' 
reexamination, a reform that has already taken place, has taken care of 
any problem that this new legislation claims to address. So the problem 
that they were suggesting that would take care of has already been 
addressed through several court cases and internal reform. So the need 
for a post-grant review change is moot, unless, of course, your goal is 
to complicate the system, to bog it down so it doesn't work, which is 
the intent of the bill.
  Reform that enables large companies, foreigners, and other infringers 
to attack our inventors again and again and add horrifying costs to the 
process is not reform.
  And it is not just foreigners who are licking their chops. As I say, 
there are multinational corporations that are ready that may be headed 
by Americans who think of themselves as citizens of the world. They're 
ready.
  But also, we've got, actually, companies that are ready to assist 
people who try to violate the little guy's patents rights. ``Patent 
Assassin,'' that's a quote, ``Patent Assassin'' is a California company 
that is ready to help potential infringers, and I quote from their Web 
site. ``You can easily infiltrate an existing patent while greatly 
reducing your company's patent infringement risk.''
  H.R. 1260 will only provide more tools for organizations like this 
and foreign companies, as well as major international corporations, to 
destroy the rights of inventors that they have enjoyed in this country 
since the founding of our country.
  You know, when you look at the patent bill, much of it is not 
changing the way the patent system works, but, instead, changing 
litigation, so the way litigation is. This will be a tremendous boost 
for lawyers who are seeking to use their skills to take something away 
from someone who owns a little piece of property that he thought that 
he put his whole life into.

                              {time}  2145

  So, through H.R. 1260, we will add all sorts of new ways to attack 
America's inventors. The big guys don't care. They've got lots of 
lawyers working for them. The big guys will be able to beat down the 
little guys, Americans, just like the little guys in Japan are beaten 
down by the economic shoguns.
  By the way, in Japan, that's why there are so few really 
groundbreaking inventions. Japan has a totally different system than 
ours. Their patent system favors the mega-corporations at the expense 
of the little guy. In fact, the Japanese system is what they want to 
harmonize our system with. Those rights are protected here in the 
United States by our Constitution and by the way our system works. In 
Japan, their people are vulnerable.
  Do we really want to be like those people in Japan?
  No, we don't want to harmonize the strong legal protections of our 
citizens with the weak legal protections in Japan and in other 
countries of the world. We don't want Americans to be like the 
Japanese. We want Americans who are individuals, who are proud of their 
individual rights, not people who cower before powerful interest groups 
as they do in Japan. Foreign companies and American-run multinational 
firms are ready to squash the little guy. That's what this bill is all 
about, and we've got to stop them.
  Another example of the real threat of H.R. 1260 is it would make it 
more difficult for a patent owner to get triple damages against an 
infringer who brazenly ignores the patent owner's rights and uses his 
invention, even knowing he is stealing it, without offering to pay a 
royalty. Without triple damages, which is what someone gets now--the 
inventor will get triple damages against a big company that just 
willfully takes his patent rights and refuses to pay him a royalty. 
Without triple damages, these little guys won't be able to get the 
lawyers to work for them on a contingency, which is the only way that 
someone who is a little guy and who has been wronged by a huge 
multinational corporation, is going to be able to have any chance of 
winning. Only big companies with lawyers on staff will be able to 
protect their patents. Nobody else will be able to because the little 
guy, without triple damages there to help pay for the lawyer, won't be 
able to get a lawyer to work with him. Giant foreign and multinational 
companies versus individual American inventors: If they win, we lose. 
If this bill passes, America loses.
  Eliminating the right to triple damages is still in the House version 
of this so-called reform bill. This absurdly bad provision is not in 
the Senate bill, but until that bill appears in a final form

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from the conference committee and is voted for on the House floor and 
on the Senate floor in its final version, that provision can stay in. 
We have no idea whether that provision will stay in, as is in the House 
version, or will be taken out, as is in the Senate version.
  It's not just triple damages, but it's also how the damages 
themselves will be calculated, which is yet another avenue of attack on 
the little guy by the big guys in this so-called patent reform bill.
  The electronics industry is arguing that any payment for patent 
infringement, which is the only penalty that can be paid--meaning if 
they stole somebody's idea and put it into their computer--must reflect 
what percentage it is of that which they have stolen of the entire 
device or end product. Thus, a mega-corporation will intentionally 
infringe because stealing is going to be a lot easier than will 
negotiating a price with the inventor. If someone is stealing someone 
else's invention, it basically eliminates someone's right to negotiate 
that price, and if the damages can only be equal to a small percentage 
of the device in which it's placed, the corporation will do that--will 
steal it--rather than negotiate a royalty agreement.
  This is an invitation to steal. This totally destroys the inventor's 
right to negotiate the price for his property. Combine that with the 
increased difficulties in claiming what ``willfulness'' is in that 
they're trying to make it more difficult to prove that someone has 
intentionally stolen someone's property. This means that the infringers 
who have intended to steal technology and who have done so with an 
arrogant disregard for the small patentholder will get away with their 
crimes, and the patentholder will be left with a minuscule award, so 
minuscule that he won't be able to hire legal services to help him 
assert his rights to the properties that he has created.
  This is in total violation of what our Constitution was all about. 
Our Constitution was about protecting that man's right to his 
inventions and to his discoveries. That's what it says in the 
Constitution, but this bill is going through, and it will have a 
dramatic impact on our way of life. If made law, this will kill any 
chance for individuals to hire legal muscle needed to enforce one's 
patent rights against corporate or foreign theft.
  So, yes, we've got mega-corporations run by people who don't consider 
themselves patriots, but foreign corporations will have that same 
power. They'll use our technology against us. The inventor who may have 
struggled for years to discover and to develop the invention, who might 
have even invested his life savings, will be at the mercy of foreign 
and corporate thieves. Punishing the large multinational corporations 
for malfeasance, or for intended theft, which is what happens today 
when these companies steal from the little guy, will be a thing of the 
past. That's what the big guys want. They don't want to get away with 
murder, but they want to get away with just about everything else.
  That's what this so-called patent reform is all about. It is clear 
the so-called patent reform bill is designed to help the law breaker--
the big guns--and to hurt the little guy. It helps foreign infringers 
and it hurts Americans. It's the patriots versus the globalists. All of 
this--the shift to first to file, pre- and post-grant review, changes 
to basic willfulness, and calculable damages--really amounts to more 
than harmonization, doesn't it? We're not just talking about 
harmonizing with the rest of the world. When you put all of this 
together, what do you get?
  The electronic mega-companies behind the scurrilous legislation have 
labeled themselves the so-called ``coalition for patent fairness.'' 
What do they want to do? It's very clear. They don't want patents at 
all. They would be much better off if we rid our country and the world 
of the idea of patents all together. It's just too bothersome for them, 
and so to hell with all the others--the inventors, the green-collar 
jobs, the biotechnology, the pharmaceuticals, our university research 
programs--all of which have a profound dependence on a strong patent 
system. These high-tech and mega-electronics corporations say they can 
just go to hell. All of these will suffer by this so-called reform 
legislation. So big electronics is thumbing its nose at America, and it 
thinks it can get away with it.
  All of the rest of us, all of these other interests in our society--
the universities and the biotechs and other interests which rely on 
patents and the pharmaceutical industry which pumps so much money into 
research--will just have their research stolen from them by foreign 
corporations.
  Look at the main proponents of H.R. 1260. Now, I won't name who the 
main proponents are of H.R. 1260. I won't name them--they're these 
mega-electronics companies--but they are made up of only one narrow 
sector of the entire American industry. These companies got to the top 
by using aggressive business models that, at best, put them into the 
gray area. Now that they are on top, they want to change the rules so 
they can stay up on top by keeping others down.
  Let me say that just a few more than a dozen of these companies that 
are behind this legislation--a few more than a dozen--have faced 
hundreds of lawsuits for infringement in the past decade. From 1996-
2008, these very companies that are at the heart of the coalition, who 
are pushing for this destructive legislation, were defendants in 730 
patent infringement cases and paid out almost $4 billion in patent 
infringement settlements during the same period.
  So no wonder they want to change the rules. No wonder they want to 
destroy the patent system. By coming here and giving people campaign 
donations and by spending all of this money in promoting this monstrous 
bill, it costs them a lot less money to change the law than it does for 
them to have to pay for the infringement and to have to pay for the 
crimes against these small inventors. They want to make sure that, 
actually, they will be able to steal the product of other people's 
work, of these small inventors in our country. Actually, it will pay 
them to do so rather than to try to work out an understanding of where 
that person could be paid a royalty, which is what they should be paid 
when they own a piece of intellectual property.
  Well, we don't work for these big companies. We work for our 
families, for our communities, and we work for America. We are the 
patriots. We are not the globalists. Most of the corporate elites of 
those mega-firms see themselves as citizens of the world, while we are 
Americans. The changes in this bill are designed to help a few hugely 
rich companies, and it will devastate hundreds more.
  Dozens and, indeed, hundreds of organizations have expressed outright 
opposition or deep concern with this bill. They are telling Congress do 
not favor one narrow industry simply because it has been so active and 
has been involved with pushing this legislation. Do what is best for 
America. We need the American people to tell that to their 
Representatives and to let their Representatives know that they are 
watching what goes on with patent law.
  The big corporate thieves are depending on us to be so bored with the 
issue. ``Oh, I'm just going to tune it out because it sounds like it's 
boring, and I couldn't understand it.'' That's what they're relying on. 
Well, it's not too boring, and people can understand it. People should 
understand how important it has been that our country has had the 
strongest patent protection of any country on this planet, just as we 
have had the same and strongest protection for the other rights--for 
our freedom of speech, for our freedom of religion and for other 
rights.
  What would happen if, in order to harmonize the freedom that we enjoy 
with the rest of the world--the freedom of religion and the freedom of 
speech--we were told that our protections of these freedoms would have 
to be diminished because we would have to diminish the protections of 
freedom of speech, of assembly and of religion because they need to be 
harmonized with the rest of the world? Well, the uproar would sweep 
across our country, but the deletion of this right, the diminishing of 
patent protection, seems so

[[Page 17729]]

esoteric to most people that they won't even listen. But if we don't 
listen and if we don't get involved, the big guns will think that they 
can slip it over on us. They've been trying to do that for 15 years. 
Only a small group of us has been able to stand up, but we need the 
help of the American people.
  We need the American people to speak up. We need people to call talk 
radio. We need people to confront their own Members of Congress. We 
need to tell the powerful infringers, You are not going to diminish the 
rights of the American people in order to harmonize the law 
internationally. The patriots in this country are not going to see 
their rights diminished in order to create a new world order where we 
can all live in harmony with the rest of the world, which, of course, 
is run by gangsters and thugs--half of the rest of the world. We're not 
going to act like people in the rest of the world where we let the 
elite tell us what to do. We have constitutional rights. We are 
Americans, but it's up to us to protect those rights.
  Wake up, America. Our freedom is being threatened. Every generation 
has met the challenges, and now it is up to us--us, United States, U.S. 
It is up to us.
  Well, we are on the edge right now. We are on the edge on a lot of 
things. Our economy is going down. This could be the nail in the 
coffin. If this bill passes, it will have dramatic, negative, long-term 
effects on our economy and on the well-being and prosperity of our 
people. We need to act. Wake up, America.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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